What is Your 1%?

How would your life be different if you did one thing, every day, which was directly in line with one of your goals? Perhaps you are looking for a new job, so that one thing could be a phone call (this can work for business, social, and relationship goals as well). What a difference you could make with one phone call every day for the next week, month, or year. Some of these could help to build new relationships and others could help to grow existing ones. Either way, as long as you stayed with it, I’m willing to bet things would change for the better.

More appropriate to this blog, what if you did one thing every day to help you move toward a health or weight goal. Now we can look at this one action as working out, cooking your own food, going for a walk, or eating an extra serving of veggies. The idea is to do something, even if it seems insignifant on it's own, because when you repeat it everyday, change will occur.

Once you start, however, there is a second piece to this equation that will end up making all the difference.

1% Better

You must strive to improve by 1% each day. While this may not seem like much change, there is no substitue for small but consistent movement toward a goal. Most people try to make huge changes all at once and fail. The concept of 1% works because it is manageable but can create great change over time. The idea of "1% better" also has a nice twist to it that I like. When you increase by 1% over time, you do not grow in a linear fashion, but rather, exponentially. That means that if you stay focused, today could be the least amount of growth you ever experience again.

Of course life is not as clean cut as a nice math equation, but I think the take away from the analogy is this: experience is the currency of growth. So every day that you work toward your goal, whether you have made tangible progress or not, you have gained experience. And over time, it is your experience that is compounding, growing, and will undoubtedly lead to your success.

Friends with Failure

To become 1% better everyday is not about seeing results right away. As mentioned, tangible progress cannot be your berometer of success. Rather, we must look at our experiences and failures as our feedback on our improvement. If you are not failing, you are not going to succeed. This is why it is important that whatever your goal, you learn to take action, and adapt quickly.

Keep trying new things, keep fighting to achieve your goal. When you fail, accept it, learn from it, and move on. The more you can become comfortable with failing, the faster you will reach you goals. Those that achieve the greatest success are usually also those that have failed the most. It is all about experience, and there is absolutely no substitue for it. This is what it means to get 1% better every day. Not that your income increases every day, or that you lose 1 lb every week. It means that every day, you try something out. Everyday you look for opportunities to take actions that might lead you to your goal.

If you do this, accept that that your actions may send you in the wrong direction, and commit to getting back on track when they do, you will reach you goals faster and become the type of person that can maintain those results for the long run.

For Who You Become

Someone I listen to regularly, Jim Rohn, always talks about the importance of goals and goal setting. He has an interesting twist on the idea, however, that is usually missing when people set out to reach a goal. Goals are usually about the outcome. I want to lose weight, I want to earn more money, I want to get a better job. What Mr. Rohn wants us to realize is that the value of a goal is not what we will achieve, but rather, who we must become to achieve such a goal.

If you want to lose weight, it is not about the number on scale; anyone can go on a detox and drop a few pounds just to add them back on later. The important part, rather, is the change in who you are, how you act, and what you value. These must occur for you to earn your weight loss and what should be sought after. Only once you see goals in this light will you be able to have long lasting and noteworthy success. 

Take Away

So as we enter the summer months and our yearly goals are well underway, let us examine our progress thusfar and reevaluate our success thusfar. However close or far we are from reaching our goals, we must remember that it does not take large, life altering changes to succeed. Rather, it takes small, but CONSISTENT movement in one direction that will lead to the most meaningful and powerful results. We must not be afraid to fail and we must value the process. With the proper perspective and undying perseverance, there is nothing we cannot accomplish.